141 - Challenges of Building a Customer Success Team with Kristen Hayer

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started.

Oh, okay. So coming live from Baja California over the Thanksgiving holiday, 2023, Kristin here. Welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the founder and CEO of a company called The Success League, which can be found at thesuccessleague.io. Welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. I appreciate you inviting me to do this.

Absolutely. Well, I interviewed you on Authority Magazine, and I was just struck by your deep background, uh, in working in corporate America and then starting your own business. Why don't you give us a little bit of, of your backstory?

Yeah, so I kind of came up through the tech industry early in my career. I majored in marketing when I was getting my bachelor's degree and kind of went into business in Seattle because that's where I lived at the time. And, you know, quickly found that marketing is a very tough field to get a toehold in and, and that actually there was a lot of other areas of business that nobody had really taught us about in school. And so I ended up working for a few tech companies in Seattle when tech was fairly new, you know, and, and I almost hate to admit how early it was in the tech scene, but it was pretty early. And so I was lucky enough to have a chance to kind of become a salesperson in the tech space. And that was after a few sort of earlier jobs that were in different areas. That was really kind of where I settled. And I had a boss who was amazing and kind of talked me into going into sales. And, and so I started developing my career in tech sales and, um, did that for a long time and, and became a sales leader. And then continued along that path and then got the chance to move to California. And right around the time that I moved to California, which is where we live now, that was around the time that customer success was really becoming a field. And so one of the first sales teams that I managed in California, I got a chance to build build a customer success organization as a part of that team that I managed. So I led sales, customer service, and customer success and business development. So kind of all of the customer-facing teams in the organization. And, and as a part of that role, I got to build out that team, and it really started to interest me because I thought, you know, I've been managing salespeople for all of these years, and Salespeople— I like dogs. I sort of look at salespeople like Labrador Retrievers. They're awesome. They're really good. They go get the ball every time for you. And they come in 3 different colors. They're all universally roughly attractive, and they're great. But customer success people are a wide variety of different kinds of people with different skills and strengths and things that they do when they're not at work. And it's such an interesting group of people. And so I got really excited about leading teams like that. Once I started leading that team, it was at a company called Vertical Response. The next company I went to, I was the VP of customer success. And so I really decided it was time to focus on that field. And I decided to do that. And so I did that for a few years, built up that team from scratch. And then from there, I, um, you know, kind of that company kind of came to its natural next step, and they were relocating from San Francisco back to their headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I wanted to stay in California. So it was kind of a natural thing for me to say, okay, I've gotta I want to, you know, make a decision here, and I want to stay in California. They were great. They were actually my first consulting client. So I got to work with them and continue to work with them to help with the transition that we did. But I also decided at that point that I had the experience and the skills that were needed across a lot of different companies to help them build customer success teams. Decided to build the Success League. I've always had kind of a desire to be an entrepreneur. This seemed like a really good business plan. And in— during all of that, I went to grad school and got an MBA. And one of the things that I learned from my MBA was that you really need to, if you're going to start a business, have a really solid business plan and know that it's going to work before you even go into it. And I knew this one was going to work, so I made the decision and made the leap, and here I am.

Yeah, just by— I know you have been in tech for a long while. Just to let you know, I learned how to code in Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code in 1969 when there was nothing but mainframes, and we were allocated 2K, 2K of storage, and everything by either paper tape punch tape or Hollerith cards.

Oh, those little cards.

Yeah. And you know where the term bug came from? So if you ran— if you ran your— you punched your cards and you ran them through the, the, the, um, compiler— that's what a compiler was, it took all the cards, compiled it into something inside the, the computer— if sometimes you get weird results and you have to go back through and look at all your cards, and there sometimes there'd be a fly or a bug an insect.

Oh, like a literal insect.

Literally an insect on the card.

Wow.

Say, I got a bug in my cards. And that's where the term bug came from.

That's funny. I mean, I have to say, my dad was an engineer and his brothers are all engineers. And I grew up coloring on those punch cards. Okay. Those were my coloring paper. He would bring those home from work. He would bring home the discs. Oh yeah, this paper from work. Yeah, that was crazy. That was what my coloring paper was.

That was pre-everything.

Yep.

Um, I can tell. Yeah, I, I went to Dartmouth and I could tell you all kinds of stories about that.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah, late '60s and '70s. Um, I, I, but I want to make this about you, not about my ancient history. Success, customer success. When we talk about customer success, what are we talking about?

There's a lot of confusion around this still, and it's a field that's now been around for about 20 years. So it's, it surprises me a little that it's still confusing, but the, the easiest way I think to define it is that it is the group of people inside your company who are responsible for demonstrating ongoing long-term value to your customers. So they're the ones that are, are kind of the new version of, I guess, what would have been account management back in the day. But I think their mission is a little different. Account management was sort of there to, you know, be the ones to answer questions, make sure you got the newest floppy disk of your software every year or whatever, you know. This, this is more like, this is a team of consultants who are in your company involved with your organization and making sure that you're getting a return on your investment in the software that you've bought.

Got it. And so when you're building a, a, a customer success team, that means you're taking, I think you use the term customer-facing teams in an organization and getting them aligned with values and processes and procedures to make sure that however the customer is being touched, it's a consistent process.

Yeah. Yeah. It, it's consistent and, and meeting their expectations. And I know that sounds simple, but it's remarkably not simple to do that.

Well, of course not. I mean, look at all the different disciplines that are involved in an organization that's customer-facing. They all have different jargon. They have values. They have different KPIs and metrics. Different people's styles that are involved. So, and meshing all of that together could be, could be very challenging, especially if people are resistant to change.

Yeah. Yeah. It, and, you know, I think the people who buy software are usually not the ones who are resistant to change, but the people who have to implement it and roll it out across the company and get everybody to adopt it are. And so sometimes there's a lot of change management that goes into customer success if you're doing it well. And I think that gets forgotten a lot. And so I appreciate you bringing that up.

Well, you're welcome. I mean, I'm a lawyer turned peacemaker. This, what you do is way outside. Well, in some ways it is. In some ways it isn't, way outside of what I do, but, and we'll, we can talk about that later. So when you can measure effectiveness from in your consulting work and you, you and your firm, how do you, how do you, how can you tell we've done a good job here with our clients? Yeah, with your clients.

Yeah, so we can tell we've done a good job if they start to have a very cohesive customer experience. So like all of the customer success managers and customer success professionals are consistent. I think, you know, one of the biggest things that customers look for in companies is consistency. That's why we go to places like Target and McDonald's. And, you know, all of the U.S. brands that we go to, we go there because we know what we're going to get. I know if I go to Starbucks, that my latte, while it may not be amazing, is going to taste like I expect it to every single time. You know, like we, we crave consistency. And so I think the first measure is how, how consistent is the customer experience? Are they going to go to Susie and get one experience and Jim and get a totally different experience? That's not good for customers. It doesn't feel good to customers. So that's one thing. I think the other thing that we're looking for from a customer metric, a company metric standpoint, and this is really why we are often brought in, is that customer retention is a massive metric that companies are measured by. So net revenue retention is big, and that means all of the revenue that you expect to come in from customers renewing, plus any revenue that you get from them expanding what they're doing with you or growing the business. That's net revenue retention. If you're losing a lot of customers, your net revenue retention is going to decline. We want it to grow. And so that's another thing we're looking for is to help our clients grow their net revenue retention. And that's how we see that we're successful. And then I'd say the final thing, and this is sort of a, sort of a lagging metric, but Customer satisfaction, you know, most companies have some way of measuring customer satisfaction. I like and dislike some of those ways, but, you know, like, I don't want to spend time on that today, but I think that, you know, however you're measuring it, we would expect it to be increasing. You know, and along with that comes, you know, customers referring new customers to you, customers sticking around for longer. Customers being an advocate for you at your trade show every year, whatever, you know, I, I think all of that is incredibly valuable.

It's a lot cheaper to keep a customer than it is to gain one.

Yeah, the last metric I read on that, it was like 7 times less expensive to keep a customer than to get a new one, which is huge because it's, it's incredibly expensive to go get a new one.

So when, when your firm is hired, uh, I mean, who typically will hire you in a, in a, in a company? At what level?

Yeah, we're, we're often brought in by either an investor or a C-level person, either a CFO, a CEO, or a COO. Chief Customer Officer is a newer title, and we're starting to see a few of those folks. But that's, it's newer. And those other three are kind of the more common leaders who bring us in. And we're usually brought in to either address a problem with retention, or we're brought in to educate a team, or we're brought in to— because we have a big training component of what we do— or we're brought in to help with a transformation with a company that hasn't had customer success and needs to put it in place. And so those are the kind of the 3 areas that we focus on.

In our Authority Magazine interview, I was struck by how important leadership development is in your mind. Tell us a little bit about that.

So I am very passionate about leadership because I was not ever given leadership training. And so I had to learn all of the things that I have learned to get to this place the very, very hardest possible way. And I, I've learned a lot over the years by trial and error and reading things. And, and so I'm passionate about leadership development because I feel like it can have such a powerful impact on people. You know, we all go to work. Most of us have to go to work, right? We have to go to work. We have to make money. That's how we live. That's capitalist society. So, you know, given that, you're at work more, more hours of the day typically than you're at home with your family. And your boss, your leader of your team, has a very material impact on how positive or negative that experience for you every single day will be. And so I think leaders have such a huge impact on everybody's health and mental health and ability to succeed. And I think great leaders choose to build more great leaders so that they can minimize the impact that bad leaders have on society. Bad leaders have a horrible impact. If you think about it, you know, if you, you went to work every day and you were getting verbally abused and you were getting put down and you went home to your family, would you have a great relationship with your family? Absolutely not! You know, and yet the opposite can be true. If you have a great leader who's building you up, you're going to be more likely to go home and have the impact on the people that you have at home that's positive and uplifting and nurturing. And so, you know, I— that's why I think leadership is so important. It has such a, a broad impact beyond work.

When you walk into an organization, obviously you're doing— you're going to be doing some assessments, and I would imagine you're assessing the leadership capacity of the organization, because without good leaders, they're never going to be able to change and adopt a good customer success plan. Would I be correct in that?

That is correct.

And what do you see when you see deficiencies, which I'm sure you see more frequently than not?

We do. Um, so What I look for in— and usually I'm looking specifically at the customer success leader who is in place rather than the whole leadership team, although sometimes we see some gaps there as well. And depending on who hired us, we may share those with the other party. But often what we're looking at is the customer success leader, and if we see gaps, but we also see coachability. We look at that as somebody who can, can learn and grow and will get better over time. If we look at somebody who has major gaps and also is not coachable, our advice to the company would be to transition them out. Because they're, they're— if they aren't coachable, those problems that they're sharing, you know, sharing with the rest of their team and the rest of the company are only going to get worse over time. And it's going to have a bigger and bigger impact the longer the company lets them go. And so, unfortunately, sometimes our work results in leaders being let go. And I mean, it's, it's not the outcome we're hoping and looking for when we come into a company. But it is— when we're making that recommendation, we take it really, really seriously. And it is the best thing for that company, right?

I know that when I'm, I'm engaged, uh, sometimes to come in and, and help companies deal with the chaos in conflicts and fights and arguments.

Yeah.

And the first thing I do, if I'm not being brought in at the C-level, then I say, who's in charge? And I need to talk to them before we do anything else. And I do— I have the same attitude you have. If I talk to the CEO or the COO or even the CFO and I see somebody who's not— because the conflict always starts at the top— if I'm seeing somebody who's not willing to change and grow and learn, I won't take the engagement.

Yeah, I mean, we've had now, um, two engagements where we've actually— and, and it's been very few and far between in the whole time we've been in business, but we've had two where we've let the client go because there just wasn't level of communication or, frankly, honesty that we needed to have to make it effective. And I don't want to go into a company and do a bunch of work and not have it go anywhere because it can't.

We both stand in our integrity. Yeah, exactly. So you've been doing this for a while. What is it that gets you excited and up in the morning to go to work?

Right now, it's funny, it's changed over the years. I've been doing this business now for a little over 8 years, about 8.5 years now. And so, you know, what used to get me excited was figuring out all the puzzle pieces of how to get a customer success team built and running effectively. Now what it is, is helping leaders, and especially female leaders in the space, become really incredibly effective and be able to make the transition from maybe a senior manager or director to a VP or Chief Customer Officer, where they're engaging more regularly with their board of directors. And they're hanging, they're hanging with the guys, basically. You know, I love helping, I love helping female leaders figure out how to engage at that level. And, and to have that seat at the table and to not only have it, but succeed wildly at it. That is what gets me up in the morning.

Cool. What is it?

What is it?

If you think about all of this, what is it that you think is unique about you, Kristen?

Um, you bring to the table, you know, that's interesting. Uh, I, I think what I bring to the table is a really broad perspective from a lot of different parts of business. I started out, like I said, I got a degree in marketing. You know, my first job was at a screen printing company because that's what I could get when I got out of college. And I was a merchandising person there. I got to experience that role. I got to experience project management roles. I've experienced sales roles. I did loop back around and have marketing for a period of time, a lot of go-to-market. Teams. And I think that what, what I bring to the table is that broad perspective on how businesses run. I think that the other thing I bring to the table is I am a creative person, and I think with creativity comes curiosity. And I spend a lot of time thinking about how businesses run. I just love the mechanics of how different kinds of, of organizations do their work. Like, are they a manufacturing company, what does that mean for them? You know, where, where, what are the costs of that? What are the, you know, what are the things that they have their people working on? Do they, you know, how do their facilities run? Tours of manufacturing facilities sounds really nerdy, but it's like one of my favorite things. Um, I love going on tours of factories, basically. I always have. And so I just, I guess I'm just curious about that. And so I learn a lot about how different companies work now that I've had Success League for 8+ years, we have had over 400, probably now closer to 500 different companies that we've worked with. And I have learned so much about different kinds of tech companies. And, you know, even though we largely focus on tech, we've still had pharmaceutical companies come through, we've had manufacturing companies come through, we've had reseller, reseller kinds of companies go through that are in the telecommunications space. And I always learn something interesting interesting and new about how they work. And I think that that's fascinating. And I think that that lets me bring all of that knowledge and expertise to every company we work with to say, hey, look, you know, you can— you need to do it your way, but here's some ideas from different industries and companies and different ways of thinking about it. And that lets me be very creative with our clients.

So Having worked with over 400 or 500 companies over the last 8 years, can you, can you think about, if you think about it, and, and this may be a way oversimplification, but what separates out the companies that you think are really successful and doing a really good job at what they do from the companies that are struggling?

I think the companies that are successful are listening to their clients. And, and not just listening to them by sending them surveys and, you know, getting their information back and, you know, doing all the data mining there. It's that, but it's also like literally listening to the customers and hearing what they're saying about the product and being willing to be humble and understand that If you're the CEO and you were part of the technology team that built this like whiz-bang cool thing that you think is the, you know, best thing since sliced bread, that it might not be and that it might take a little tweaking to get it there. And I think that listening combined with the humility is what makes people successful.

And that of course leads to my, the pivotal question and the whole point of this podcast. How critical is listening in leadership?

It is, it is the most important thing you can do. And I, I say that, and I don't say that just because I'm on the show. I say that because I really genuinely believe that. I think that as a, you know, if you start out in leadership as a manager, which most of us do, the very first most important thing that you can learn to do well is to have one-on-ones regularly with your people. And you're having those not to boss them around, but you're having those to listen to them and get to know them and get to know what makes them tick so that you can help to maximize their performance. And then as you get further along in your career, maybe you're a director or you're a VP, you need to be not only listening to your team, but you need to be listening to your peers. In the company. You need to be listening always. If you're in our, our part of a company, you always have to be listening to the customers. But that aside, you have to be listening to your peers as a director. You have to be hearing that your head of engineering maybe doesn't have the team or bandwidth to do as much stuff as they would like to do, and you're one of a variety of priorities that they've got, and you need to prove yourself in your business case. So you have to be listening for those things. You have to understand how those teams work. You have get to know those people. And then as you go into the C-level, um, you have to listen for cracks everywhere in your company. You also have to be listening to what's going on in your market. You know, you have to be paying attention to the broader market space. You have to listen to what your investors are saying, and you have to be listening to, you know, what, what not just the individual customers are saying, but what the market is telling you about where you sit. And you need to make changes accordingly. And so I think as you go from that narrow view as a manager to a very broad view as a C-level, listening is such a critical piece of all of that. It's just who you are listening to changes.

So what, what's interesting to me is I, of course, I completely agree with, with everything you've said is that no one's taught how to listen. We really are not taught how to listen. So how do you think people are able to develop their listening skills? Is it just trial and error and on-job experience and caring enough to really try to figure out listening, or do you think people can be coached?

I think people can be coached. I always think people can be coached.

I hope so.

If they're coachable, they can be coached. They're not always open to coaching, but if they're open to coaching, Every skill is something you can learn. It drives me nuts when people are like, "Oh, they're a born salesperson," or, "They're a born marketer." And it's like, nobody is a born anything. Everyone learns skills, and everyone can learn skills as they go forward. I think learning listening is hard because our world is so loud. And, you know, it seems like And I don't, I'd love to get your take on this because it seems like a loud world would make us listen more, but it actually, I think, kind of makes us listen less.

Too many distractions.

Yeah.

What, what do you think about, I, well, okay. Give me your take on that.

So, okay. So two types of listening, type one listening and type two listening. Most people only do type one listening. Where the agenda is on them and they're listening for their own purpose. Maybe they need information, maybe to just, it's all about me, but they're not focused on the speaker at all. And that's where most people are in their listening. Type 2 listening is speaker-focused, where my whole agenda is to listen to you from your frame of reference and understand and reflect what you're saying so that we both have a deep appreciation for what you're saying. Uh, and we're not— most people— I teach Type 2 listening. Uh, most people are not taught it. And I think when we're Type 1 listening, it's too easy for our minds, especially if we're focused on words, to get distracted by what's going on on your telephone or what's going on on the internet or what other people are saying or thinking or doing. And, and so it becomes very difficult to focus. But what's really interesting is when you learn Type 2 listening, it becomes really easy to focus on what the speaker is saying, because in that moment, your total concentration is on their meaning and feelings, their emotions, their emotional experience. And that's when you really get in. That's when you really become a deep listener, and you can turn it off and on as you need to. Um, but it allows you to, for example, having one-on-ones and not only listen to the words that maybe appear, or a subordinate is telling you, but what's the feeling underneath it? What's their emotional experience? Which oftentimes is a disconnect between what they're saying and what they're feeling. And learning how to hear that disconnect and then think about what's really going on here. We're dealing with situations, difficult conversations, for example. I mean, you're at C-level, hopefully you don't have to have too many difficult conversations, but you have I do have to have them.

Yeah.

And it's anxiety-producing unless you know what to listen for. And when I facilitate difficult conversations, the first thing I say, this is not an exercise in talking, this is an exercise in listening.

Yeah. It's funny, we teach a class on difficult conversations because of course in customer success you have to have them constantly. And And I actually use my teaching for my— I have a daughter who's now in college, but at the time, she had to have a difficult conversation with a friend. And she was 13. And I was like, you know, I have a class on this. Can I just like walk you through it and teach you how to prepare for the conversation that you have to have? And she was like, Mom, that's your work. I'm like, trust me, just, it'll, it'll be okay. You know, I'm just, and if it's not useful to you and you don't want to use it, you don't have to use it. You can go do, you can wing it, you know, but just try it. It, we have a little worksheet that goes along with it and it, it was, it was so fun to watch her go through that class and learn about how to handle that. Which is a pretty mature topic that frankly a lot of adults have not figured out how to do well. And to take away some things that she— I mean, she, she had a difficult conversation. It did not go as well as it could have, but it went probably better than it would have if she was winging it. And for a 13-year-old, I thought she handled it pretty maturely. And a lot of it was like asking questions of the other person. And really thinking about what that meant. And, um, and I think that, you know, if you can even teach a, you know, a 13-year-old girl who's in middle school and dealing with friend drama about it, you can teach anybody about it. And it— and I think people can learn to do that. And I think it's fantastic that you have, um, classes on how to do type 2 listening. It's so critical, and it's critical at work, but it's also critical throughout the rest of your life too.

I'll, I'll just tell you this, um, I'm the co-founder of the Prison of Peace Project here in Keller, where we train people serving life and long-term sentences how to become peacemakers to stop prison violence. First skill we teach them is deep reflective listening, and we've had over 700 of our students released on parole in California. Not one of them has reoffended.

That's incredible.

That's how powerful this stuff is.

Yeah. I had seen that on your website, but I hadn't heard that result. And I think that's amazing. Incredible. Not like, I mean, I don't know if people know this, but my husband was in, um, juvenile rehab work for a long time. The, the level of reoffenses is very high. So to have nobody reoffend is pretty incredible.

Yeah. Well, it's because, I mean, there's a lot, a lot into it, but basically we teach them, we teach as they learn how to become peacemakers and mediators, they're learning life skills they've never learned before. Then, and when they get out, they, they no longer have a criminal mindset. They have a, they have a servant mindset of serving others. And so that completely changes their lives.

That's great.

One more question and I'll let you go. What's one thing about you, Kristen, that we wouldn't know about unless you revealed it to us?

Okay, I grew up in Papua New Guinea. So my parents worked overseas when I was a kid. I lived there from middle school through high school. And Papua New Guinea is, if you don't know where that's at, and a lot of people don't, it is an island in Indonesia that is north of Australia, and it looks like a, it's shaped kind of like a dinosaur. So if you're looking at a map, that's Papua New Guinea. Half of the country is an independent nation. The other half is part of Indonesia. And so the independent nation part is where I lived. I went to boarding school there. My parents worked out in a remote village. And, um, and so that is something that I don't share with a lot of people. It's, it's sort of weird. It's a weird way to grow up, but it's also something that taught me a lot.

So I bet.

Yeah.

Amazing. Well, this has been a great conversation, Kristen. Thank you so much for taking time out of your nice vacation day down in Mexico.

Oh, thanks, Doug. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate you having me on the show, and it's been delightful to talk with you.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team.

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